PwC: Lehman staff will be paid

4,500 Lehman Brothers' staff who have continued working since the bank went into administration will get paid this month, PwC has said.

Administrators from the firm said on a webcast this afternoon that those who have kept on working will be paid their salary for the last month by September 30.

It had been uncertain as to whether staff would receive their pay.

Speaking on the webcast, PwC partner Tony Lomas said: 'One very important point - when we arrived there were no funds here. Staff were concerned that they weren't going to be paid their September salaries.

'And we were concerned we wouldn't be able to make various other payments necessary to continue.

'We have succesfully concluded negotiations on raising funds.. we've arranged a loan which has enabled us to give an undertaking to staff that before the end of the month we will pay all 4,500 staff…as long as [they] turn up to work to help in our efforts to take this forward.'

Lomas added: 'We're here to take the opportunity to communicate progress made at Lehmans in the UK because there's a lot of uncertainty out there.

'A lot of counter parties are interacting with bank wanting to know what's going on.

'A lot of work has been done since Monday morning in effort to take control of the company's affairs … and begin the wind down.

'We're not responsible in our administration capacity for all of the companies. There are some still solvent and still trading.

'It's important also that the trading entities out there who are doing business with Lehman and who want to resolve those situations understand how we operate as an administrator and what is important to us is that they can take this into account when they develop their strategies when dealing with their exposures.

'The key for us is the control and protection and assets that belong to the company.

'We have to turn those assets into cash, making sure that those assets don’t transfer in some uncontrolled way to a third party.

'And further more with regard to the liabilities that Lehmans has to various institutions out there, we need to make absolutely certain that no preference is created, that no institution out there receives payment, who shouldn't receive it in priority to anybody else.

'Those principles are overriding all of our actions here. We've communicated those to the traders in order to develop a way of working going forwards with them.'

Lomas revealed later on the webcast that the Bank of England had helped the administrators.

He said: 'In particular the Bank of England has been very helpful in establishing the banking facilities for us because the company didn't have any bank accounts of its own that were in operation anyway, relying on the parent company in operation in the US, for cash transactions so that’s enabled us to deposit the money that we borrowed and now begin to make payments including the salary payments.

The administrators have set up a hotline, the number for which will be announced shortly, and a website to deal with the many enquiries they are getting.

'We've had that many that the systems have become jammed so we’re not confident that we can turn this around as quickly as our counter-parties would like so this is a step to try and resolve that,' Lomas said.

The email address to us for those who want to contact the administrators is: enquiries.lehmanbrothers@uk.pwc.com